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As the clock ticks down...are you for or against Brexit ?


alittlebitfrench
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In theory I'm not against a country withdrawing from a bloc that it has good reasons for not wanting to be a part of any more. It's a no brainer.

I'm against this particular Brexit because I think it's been dreadfully mismanaged from start to finish and it will cause a lot of damage.
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NormanH wrote the following post at 06 Dec 2020 21:04:

As a British person still paying taxes there neither did I.

What taxes are you paying in the UK ?

I have never understood why you pay taxes in the UK when your competent state is France .. where you worked for many years before your retirement.

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I think that one of the positives of Brexit is that it has starkly illustrated the huge advantages of being a member of one of the largest trading blocks in the world. The financial advantages are enormous but they are only one part of the equation. Only a fool would say that France would be keen to follow Britain, a fool or someone trying to wind up other posters.
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Without NH answering various forms of government pensions, whether they be, military, some civil servants and teaching  and probably police too.........all have to pay taxes on their UK income via UK PAYE.

AND the same applies if say a french french teacher with a french pension moved to the UK, or anywhere else for that matter, the paying state gets first dibs at the pension. Just the way it is. So I would imagine that NH would come under one of the above mentioned headings.

Re Brexit, well, I was against the vote into the European Community, never mind 'this thing' we have now.

Not one thing made me think better of it, so yes, I am pleased we are leaving, even if it is messy.

AND my situation, well, we could end up moving back to France if they get awkward about paying the french pensions....... not catastrophic, but I would prefer not to.

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 I can see that the EU has problems, but I voted to stay in all those years ago, and still do not agree with leaving it .. the leaving process has been a shambles, on all sides, from the day the referendum was anounced ..  as for the French, they never know which way to think and are so pessimistic they'd say anything contra to the current idea just for the sake of an argument.

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idun wrote the following post at 06 Dec 2020 21:28:

Without NH answering various forms of government pensions, whether they be, military, some civil servants and teaching and probably police too.........all have to pay taxes on their UK income via UK PAYE.

Yes Idun .. you are right. I had completely forgotten that Norman has a government pension from the UK.
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And a French pension, so I pay taxes here too.
AND because I have a French pension France is my competent state for health cover (I get my CEAM card ... EHIC for Brits..from Ameli) I also have  to pay the various social charges. I can't opt out as those with an SI can.[:(]

On Brexit I was very much against; but now I would almost like to  see a no-deal so that Johnson and co. have to accept the consequences, although he will pretend that much of the economic damage is a result of Covid.

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Well, I have always been a Remainer even if much about the EU project now disgusts me.

However, I think the behaviour of the EU negotiating team has been deplorable as they have, IMHO, negotiated in bad faith. Never forget that Barnier is French and that his loyalty will always be to France, as well as having Macron pulling his strings.

Unlike Norman however I do not rubbish the English majority who voted against as there are good reasons for their having done so.
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But wooly, Barnier is the EU negotiator. Obviously his loyalty is to the EU (including France but not only) just as Frost's loyalty is to the UK.

I'm sure it's not intentional but your post does remind me of the many in the UK who seem to feel it's somehow not cricket for the EU to protect its own interests. To me it's a contradictory argument - on the one hand they're saying that it is a negotiation between two equals and the UK holds all the cards, and on the other hand they're saying that the EU should pull its punches and not bully poor ikkle UK.
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ET, yours is the best comment on this topic that I have read on the forum.  Bravo![:)]

I determined earlier on NEVER to make any further comment on Brexit, the negotiations, its consequences, etc etc.  In other words, I don't feel that there is any more to say that hasn't been said already.

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There is negotiation and negotiation. Much of this has been fine but some has been carried out in bad faith. Not that they should hand and presents to Britain, but attempting to punish her because she chose to leave in order to keep others from doing so is vicious.

Norman, I do think that criticising Borees and the other Brexits in the way you did made it look as if the voters were being led blindly; the groundswell to leave was already there, I reckon for complex reasons related to the English identity or loss of it, as many saw felt.
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NH, I wish you had not said that about people being misled about their vote. It would be like saying that in 'general' that if people do not vote as we agree with, that someone or other has led them down the garden path.

I have friends who are highly educated and they vary between being for and against the EU. There is no reason why people like me, who are not  'highly' educated should not have a point of view either and perfectly capable of making a decision and voting.

Barnier, well Juncker probably thought he chose well. I would think that his choice of Barnier was 'expres'. And well, these eurocrats, still have a nationality and Barnier is french, I would rather it had been a negotiator from another country. And maybe Juncker / Barnier thought that they could do as they pleased with May in charge, but ofcourse we don't have May anymore.

 I wouldn't even be saying this if we had not experience the last four years of the USA debacle. These most recent US elections have been a real eye opener about 'misleading', and Mr Malfaisant, the exiting president has been bad mouthing the press for years, leading to complete distrust by nearly half the population. So that is something quite different and terrible.
 

I never trust everything I read in the press, I understand that not all of their reporting is true, no blind faith from me..........so I get as much information as I can from all sources, and some things I take with a pinch of salt, but in the UK, it is probably as good as it can be in a democracy.

We will weather all this eventually, Brexit and Covid. And both will continue to affect people on the european mainland  as well as us on these little islands, for sadly some time to come.

I keep thinking of my Dad, WW11 started when he was 15, and he was badly injured by the first bomb that hit the town where he lived when he was 17. At least bombs are not falling on us, donc, I am sure that we will get over all this.

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woolybanana wrote the following post at 07/12/2020 13:21:

There is negotiation and negotiation. Much of this has been fine but some has been carried out in bad faith. Not that they should hand and presents to Britain, but attempting to punish her because she chose to leave in order to keep others from doing so is vicious.

Wooly, could you give me a specific example of either negotiating in bad faith, or attempting to punish the UK? Because these are accusations that are often made but I sometimes wonder whether the people making the accusations have actually looked at it from both sides. So it would help me to understand if you could give a specific example.

For instance, in February the UK signed a political declaration saying that they understood and accepted the need for a level playing field so that the EU could let them access the single market without fear of them distorting it by undercutting EU member states. And as soon as negotiations resumed they took the line that as a sovereign nation the UK cannot be tied to a level playing field - and yet, they still feel entitled to access to the single market. I would give that as an example of the UK negotiating in bad faith.

So I think, it cuts both ways.
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As a spectator to this whole Brexit thing, I would say that the UK Government are just a bunch of clowns. Brexit is a dumb thing to do.

That said, the way the EU have behaved in the negotiations is quite frankly disgusting and underlines why the majority of people living in the EU hate the EU institution. Nobody likes the 'EU' institution. Let's face it.

Is Brexit wrong? Yes. Are thoses running the EU institution a complete bunch of arsêholes ? Yes.

But getting back to Macron. Is there any country or person in the world that he has not pÏssed off ?

France riots every weekend costing the tax payer millions. Does the UK ? No.

Macron is a nice bloke. ...but....he does more harm than good every time he opens his mouth.

So basically, I agree with Wooly.

I stand by my earlier comments that France would vote out of the EU and the Euro tomorrow.

So yeah....I stand behind the UK now on this one.
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Two thoughts spring to mind immediately; the exclusion of Britain from the exchange of security information, though this will doubtless be managed through back channels as it is too important to leave to politicians.

And the initial huge demands for money as a sort of compensation package.

Beyond ploys, both, just Junker’s bad faith.

I think the British tried to negotiate with the EU but did not realise the extent to which individual States were calling the shots behind the scenes, notably Macron.

Whether even talking to the Scots was a direct insult or not is questionable.

Anyway, it looks as if it is all going to tomber à l’eau tonight Was the EU ever negotiating in good faith?
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"NH, I wish you had not said that about people being misled about their

vote. It would be like saying that in 'general' that if people do not

vote as we agree with, that someone or other has led them down the

garden path."

I am not criticising the voters, and not even suggesting that they should have voted in the way that I think (although I would have liked it if they did)

By the word 'mislead' I was thinking of many of the claims of the leave campaign: a few links:

If you bought a car on the basis of false information I wouldn't say that you were a fool to buy it just because I hadn't done the same thing.

I would say that the people who sold it to you had 'mislead' you...

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woolybanana wrote the following post at 07/12/2020 15:34:

I think the British tried to negotiate with the EU but did not realise the extent to which individual States were calling the shots behind the scenes, notably Macron.

But what is the EU, if not a union of individual countries? Britain surely knew that Barnier was acting as the representative of all the member states. And again there is a contradiction in that on several occasions the UK tried to enter into discussions on the side with individual leaders, and had to be rebuked for it. So maybe it genuinely did not understand how the negotiations operated.

On the security and data sharing issue, don't forget that the UK has seriously breached its security commitments more than once, the Home Office's data gathering methods have been judged unlawful by the EU, and the UK wasn't prepared to be bound by EU rules in the future nor to clearly state what rules it would adopt. So it's not as if the EU doesn't have an argument or two on its side.

The "compensation" package also isn't exactly clear cut is it, there are aguments both sides.

I'm under no great illusions about the EU but I don't think that you can blame a party in a negotiation for putting itself first and doing what it takes to protect its own interests. I think the UK's negotiating skills have been remarkably poor and I think the gratuitous bad mouthing of the EU in the UK media and portraying it as "the enemy" has not helped. The whole thing has turned into a mess and both sides have to share the blame for that. At the end of the day it is not a crime for two sides to have incompatible demands, but if that's the case they should have recognised it and agreed that a deal will not be possible. There is no need for all these recriminations. It is the same with company takeovers and mergers, sometimes talks begin and it becomes clear that there are insurmountable barriers and the talks end, no bad feeling. If Johnson can't accept the EU's demands and can't persuade them to change, he should have walked away a long time ago.
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[quote user="EuroTrash"]  ............................ If Johnson can't accept the EU's demands and can't persuade them to change, he should have walked away a long time ago.[/quote]

He can't. Everyone remembers that the twerp said:

"There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a great deal"
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